CoRe Goes PESC – Previews & Interviews

This saturday, on May 2nd, the iRacing scene is about to reach a peak – the 2020 season of the Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup will finally take place – broadcasted and shown on the official Porsche Youtube & Twitch channel. CoRe SimRacing drivers Sindre Setsaas and Carl Jansson are going along for the ride in one, if not the most, notorious and competitive simracing event of the year. We’re taking a closer look at CoRe’s premier Scandinavian simracers and try to forecast what’s about to happen this season and especially, this weekend.

• You made it into the PESC. We all know that the qualifier for this series was a tough one. What gave you the motivation to do it and successfully qualify for it?

Sindre : “It wasn’t my own inital plan to qualify for PESC. I wanted to support my teammates in getting qualified – then I simply just got dragged into it. I do was close at quitting after the third round but nevertheless things got turned around when I scored solid points. After round four I have to admit I started to perform at my highest peak I’ve ever had in simracing. I think just having your teammates around depending on you to help them and vice versa puts you in a position where you just gotta keep pushing. It can be hard sometimes, especially with a super tight schedule like we had in the qualifiers, but it’s very rewarding if you get a result out of it.”

Carl : “I always hoped that I had enough pace – but after few rounds pushing hard with my teammates, I was starting to get closer and more comfy at the limits I needed to perform at. I struggled at the beginning mostly because I could not get the qualifying laps done for a good grid position. But I kept practising and I improved by the end of the qualifiers. Then it finally got me locked in for the series.

• You’re looking at probably the most competitive field in simracing. What are your expectations for the season? Feeling confident in your pace? Or you’ll just see what’s gonna happen?

Sindre : “It’s looking good in practice at the moment but you never know what you got until you line up on the grid waiting for the lights. You can’t expect anything in a field like this, I know I can beat the people I’ve raced in the qualifiers. Getting inside the Top 5 or even Top 10 however is probably gonna prove to be more difficult.”

Carl :“With a competitive field like that my main goal is to remain in the Top 20 when the series is over. So then I should not need to requalify again. Pacewise I am not really sure where I am at the moment but judging from my practice I think I’ll do decent. I’d be happy to take everything that’s inside the first twenty – but I’ll try to maybe touch something around the Top 10’s, of course.”

• Having one of your best teammates in the series seems to be a good thing – but apart from your practice – what will be when the lights turn green? Are you working together or is everyone on his own when you guys spawn on the grid?

Sindre :“We’ve known each other for about three years now and I don’t think I could have a better teammate than Carl in a series like this. We worked well together in qualifiers, especially the last weeks to get Carl locked in into the series. I think that time made us understand what we need to do to succeed. The surprisingly few times we we’re next to each other on track in qualifiers we worked through the pack of cars quite well, hopefully we can see more of that.”

Carl : “I am pretty sure that there will be moments on track where we must and need to work together. We did that already several times and not only when we shared a single car. We might not always be in the same place on track, we’ll have our own battles for sure and that’s what’s so hard about PESC and especially in sprint races. Racing between us always has been a very fair thing and I am pretty sure we’ll stick to how we’ve done it so far.”

The iRacing Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup 2020 will start this saturday at Circuit Park Zandvoort. Don’t miss premier simracing action this weekend when 40 of the best simracers will compete against each other for a prize pool of 200.000 $ US-Dollars – and who to be crowned as the Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup 2020 Champion.